I have had an on-again, off-again fascination with milling decks over the course of my years playing Magic. Whenever a new milling card or set of cards comes out that looks promising, I invariably try to make the most of them. One of the most exciting sets for me in this regard was Ravnica, thanks to the Dimir guild. Unfortunately, milling is a difficult concept to really apply well in both casual and tournament decks.

Casual decks can certainly be designed to be played in duels, which makes milling an easier concept to pull off than in multiplayer. You know that you have to take about 60 cards down to 0, and the opponent’s draws help advance your goal as a side effect of playing. When we extend casual to multiplayer games, however, the concept becomes much more difficult. A number of good milling cards and strategies are aimed at taking out one deck at a time, which is a difficult enough task to accomplish while staying in the game. Once at least one opponent catches on to what your strategy is, which is hard to conceal if you’re making any progress whatsoever, it’s fairly likely that the group will attempt to finish you before you can succeed. Even simply multiplying the number of decks necessary to mill makes this task difficult.

Tournament-caliber milling decks are few and far between. The reasons for this are numerous. Wizards has been making creature quality higher and higher over the past few years, which means that creature decks (and the color green in particular) have reached an all-time high in efficiency. With so many decent to good to crazy creatures available and comparatively small number of cards that mill, along with the strictly numeric difference of 20 life versus 60 cards (or 53, if we’re discounting opening hands), milling decks have to be very good or they will fail to compete.

The most successful milling deck of recent times has been the Turbo-Fog

may or may not be able to adapt and survive to the new Standard environment, although it is important to note that creature decks- especially of the Jund variety- are still thriving and leading the way. The question I’m addressing in this article is not whether Turbo-Fog

is probably too slow to work in most milling decks and isn’t worth the slot. While that one card a turn will add up (or more in multiples), its frail body along with less than stellar ability aren’t crying out for addition. Hedron Crab

is the main workhorse of a deck like this. At five mana, this has to be close to the top of the curve, but 13 cards is a sizable chunk, and instant speed certainly helps. While you won’t always be able to set off the trap for its discounted price, even the possibility of playing it for free is great. Currently, there is one spell in Standard that lets an opponent search his or her library, which can help this out if it’s good. Is it good? It’s Path to Exile

. It gives you five Adept activations (assuming that the Adept would have lived that long to begin with) all at once. While it will never get you more than 5, it can hit the opponent hard and fast, which is what the deck probably needs. Is that good enough? Either way, Traumatize

is tricky to analyze. Pros: it’s a non-creature permanent, it’s a continuous ability, it can add up, and it punishes opponents for doing something they want to do. Cons: two cards at a time probably won’t cripple them, it can be played around, and it is vulnerable to cards like Maelstrom Pulse

has spend the last few years helping the Faerie decks out, but he was clearly designed with milling in mind. The “drawback” of forcing the opponent to draw cards depletes the opponent’s library and can actually finish them off a turn sooner (since a player doesn’t lose from having an empty library in and of itself, a player loses when they would have to draw a card but cannot). He’s weaker now thanks to the Vampire Hexmage

refills the hand while padding the life total (albeit at a high cost). Overall, the blue-white milling deck is probably a slower option but has protections against losing to creature strategies that blue itself lacks.

Black- These days, black’s mass removal is lacking compared to white’s, but there is a plethora of spot removal to choose from. Disfigure

on turn six can be the end of an opponent’s otherwise healthy deck right there. Do not underestimate the power of this combo, on the other hand, relying on it may get you killed in the meantime. If it can be pulled off, it’s the ultimate in milling.

Red- A blue-red milling deck may seem counterintuitive, but can actually have some potential. Burn, including Lightning Bolt

c2Fw. Blue-green milling might not quite get there on its own, but with all of this fixing, blue-green-x milling is definitely possible.

So there you have it. If you’ve gotten this far expecting me to name the best possible Standard milling deck, I’m sorry to disappoint you. I believe that it’s a good idea to lay out the possible contenders in each of the many ways that this deck can be built and let you take it from there depending on your collection and your own interests. Hopefully you’ve found this helpful and it’s jogged your own interest in whittling away the opponent’s deck. I’ll leave you with my take on a Grixis

is a favorite, but it seemed a little unwise to run a card that required both splash colors in this current Standard (where, after all, colors in casting costs matter again). In the end, and of course depending on the metagame, I think that this is one of the more interesting builds available. It also makes for some crazy, memorable plays (Twincast